A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette THE GALLUP POLL reported recently that a majority of the American people feel that Germany •will attempt another war in the next generation or...
...I think of a young woman with generations of culture behind her, describing to me a terrible night of November 1937 of the Jewish "purge...
...As we re-read the memoirs of men who grappled with the postwar problems of World War I, we cannot escape the faet of our failure not at setting up world machinery for peace but at strengthening the only firm foundation—economic security through democratic government for the starving people of Germany as' elsewhere...
...Peace can never be based on the personal attitude of many of our so-called internationalists...
...The facts that produced Hitler are well-known to those who care for the truth and who sincerely seek a basis for permanent peace...
...She could hardly talk as she told me of her experience, and ended with, "And to think that I, a German, should have to submit to such horrors...
...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette THE GALLUP POLL reported recently that a majority of the American people feel that Germany •will attempt another war in the next generation or thereabouts...
...By the good fortune of being born citizens of a great and new power we have a self-confidence, a "place in the sun" which many of us fail to appreciate...
...Alexander Meiklejohn at a recent meeting of the American Association for Adult Education when he said, pointing out as "absurd" and "childish arrogance" the belief that American teachers could go into Germany and help rebuild the educational system, that "we need to re-educate ourselves first...
...Our friend told us later that the group had been greatly interested in Phil's point of view, and particularly impressed with his optimism for the future...
...Those who belong to the old-fashioned school which punished insanity, starved,and flogged prisoners, believed in "spare the rod and spoil the child" education, and are blind to the enlightened approach of ascertaining the cause of maladjustment, are having an emotional debauch which as seriously affects ourselves as it does the enemy...
...But of course," one of them remarked with a sigh, "La Follette doesn't realize that we over here have to have a war every other generation...
...The same was true in Italy, although it had been under the yoke much longer, and we recognize the truth of the words of an Italian woman who, again, risked her life to tell us "the truth" when we were last in Rome...
...The day will come when we are needed...
...Re-educate Ourselves First' Vengeance and bitterness are corrosive...
...Wonders never cease, of course, but the lack of imagination and ability to put one's self in the other fellow's shoes is a source of constant amazement to me these days...
...What will happen to our country if she is deserted by all the people like ourselves...
...I recall a trip to England in the '20s (when Phil and I were also in our 20's), and a friend gave a dinner for Phil...
...Our program should call for an international body that will plan for the education of all the nations, not Germany alone...
...True, I never had the opportunity for prolonged visits or study there, but I have, or had, friends there who would certainly stack up among the "flower of civilization...
...What could we hope for humanity if man lacked that inherent will to rise whieh the heaviest yoke seems never able to crush...
...The re-education of Nazi Germany will not come from what we say but what we do...
...Men and women who crossed the ocean to partake of the music, science, industrial, and other cultures of Germany, who loved their experience there and made it a part of their lives, suddenly forget all those values and proclaim the total iniquity of the German people as "anyon" —1 ^ has been there knows...
...Yet month after month she and thousands like her risked life itself to shelter Jewish friends, and hope and plan for the day when they could throw off the yoke...
...Our Sacred Responsibility Frankly, I am appalled at the smallness and smugness of the judgments of some Americans on the suffering peoples of other nations...
...Encouraging to me were the words of Dr...
...Visitors with an American passport find it almost impossible to appreciate the position of the man and woman in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia...
...We will help re-educate Nazi Germany only by building up a reasonable world in which it can have a reasonable part," Dr...
...We are courteously treated, shown the sights the authorities want us shown, talk to citizens whose every word is watched and cheeked, and when we feel like it we leave...
...For we at home have the sacred responsibility for guarding and nourishing the Four Freedoms which thousands of ouj youth are dying to gain for us...
...She pointed out, "Leaders can only develop in the soil of democracy...
...With talk of unconditional surrender, dis-membering the Reich, proposing that the Germans in forced labor restore countries they have harassed—what would you do if you were a German ? In the war hysteria to which, strangely enough, the most "educated" are the most susceptible, facts and values disappear in a sea of hatred...
...Otherwise we will fail...
...The fact that a patriot like Signor Bonomi could exist for 20 odd years like a hunted thing, and live to form a cabinet in the day of liberation, should be a strengthening draught to all liberty-loving people...
...This is supposed to prove, I judge, our belief in the inherent wickedness of the German people...
...Meiklejohn said...
...These are people who have endured the torture of the past years in the faith expressed by the father of a friend of ours who had a fine opening offered him in America in the early days of Nazism, "My son, you cannot go...
...In a dictatorship country where government rules by force, men and women know more about courage and endurance than I pray it is ever o»r lot to be put to the test...
...Those Who Have Endured My memory is not so short...
Vol. 8 • June 1944 • No. 26
